Like a Tree

A Novel

Title Details

Pages: 432

Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in

Formats

Hardcover

Pub Date: 09/01/2008

ISBN: 9-781-6030-6036-3

List Price: $29.95

Imprint

NewSouth Books

Related Subjects

FICTION / General

Like a Tree

A Novel

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  • Description
  • Reviews
It was 1935, the sixth year of the Great Depression. Most of the population was living on faith, hope, and denial. Still, it was not a bad year to be sixteen—if you were white, middle-class, Protestant, and lucky enough to be living in Atlanta. Like a Tree is the story of the Krueger family and how they coped and conquered through the spirit-breaking years of the nineteen-thirties. In a larger context, Like a Tree is about the South's white liberal minority that worked quietly and largely underground, fighting prejudice, segregation, and ignorance to emancipate future generations. Early reviewers have called this book "touching," "absorbing," "powerful, "important," "original," "richly textured." It is a testament to perseverance, love, goodwill, and the fortitude of ordinary human beings.
A sweeping, elegantly crafted story that explores Atlanta’s and the South’s complex racial and social past.

—Vernon Jordan, civil rights activist and Clinton advisor

In Like a Tree, author Calvin Kytle tells a compelling story of a family struggling to find itself in Depression-time Atlanta. Like the family itself, the city and region are also seeking their own sociological identity. Kytle’s well-drawn characters are real and appealing. His easy style makes for entertaining reading. It’s a splendid, heart-warming look at a simpler time in the Deep South. In reading Like a Tree I felt I was reliving my own boyhood in Atlanta. A most enjoyable book.

—Ernie Harwell, broadcaster, Baseball Hall of Fame

At 87, Calvin Kytle has jumped from the nonfiction shelf to the fiction shelf and has landed as gracefully as a gymnast. His remarkable first novel tells the story, from small town to city, of Douglas Krueger, painfully trapped between his uncommon moral alertness and a segregationist, early 20th century Georgia that has no place for its exercise. With a sharp eye for detail, a brisk narrative, and an understanding born of intimacy with the times and the region, Kytle has humanized history with a rich cast of compelling characters. Even the walk-ons come and go full-fleshed.

—Tom Teepen, Cox Newspapers

About the Author/Editor

CALVIN KYTLE (1920-2008) was a writer, editor, and publisher whose work appeared in Harper's, the New York Times Book Review, and Saturday Review. He lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.